Caracas: Venezuela's National Assemblygranted President Hugo Chavez unprecedented power to rule by decree, increasinghis authority to move forward on his leftist agenda  from the oil industry to telecommunications tobanking. 

Chavez was given the special powers for 18 months Wednesdayby a legislature fully controlled by his party and a handful of allies on.

The legislators took their celebratory vote under the openair and tropical blue skies of Caracas'smain square, Plaza Bolivar, where ordinary Venezuelans also gathered.

National Assembly speaker Cilia Flores asked for a show ofhands from dozens of government supporters congregated below the statue ofVenezuelan and Latin American independence hero Simon Bolivar.

"Approved unanimously, with the vote of thepeople," he said.

Chavez did not attend the ceremony, and was represented byVice President Jorge Rodriguez, who joked about criticism from home and abroad thatthe move has turned Chavez into a dictator.

"See how dictatorial, to make power in the hands of thestate go directly to the people, and to legislate so that it goes directly tothe people," Rodriguez said, referring to the show of hands in the plaza.

"A dictatorship is what we had before, the dictatorshipof a few. We want to insure the dictatorship of true democracy," he added.

With his new powers, Chavez will be capable of enactingsweeping changes to government institutions, local elections, finance andtaxes, banking, national defence, and the energy field as he attempts toestablish a socialist system.

The country's opposition boycotted the last legislativeelection in 2005. Opposition parties have criticised the latest move as a steptoward totalitarianism in the fifth-largest oil exporter in the world.

Protestors were scant in sight on Wednesday. But lastweekend, they demonstrated against another of Chavez's moves to lift thetelevision license held by the critical broadcaster RCTV, holding up signsdepicting Chavez holding a rifle.

The controversial left-wing populist Chavez  who also was given special powers in 2001 -earlier this month announced plans to nationalise the country's largestelectricity and telecommunications firms and end the autonomy of the CentralBank. Last week, he expropriated the Charallave private airport outside of Caracas.

He also wants to remove presidential term limits from theconstitution, raising the spectre of a leader with the ambition to hold on to thereins of power as did his political idol, Cuba's Fidel Castro, who has reignedfor 47 years.

Chavez's tenure has raised concerns in the US that he hasmarginalised democracy. Relations between the two countries have grownincreasingly sour in recent years. The US intelligence czar, JohnNegroponte, Tuesday warned that Chavez was a threat to democratic governance inthe region.

 US President George Bush on Wednesday said Chavez'snationalisation plans will make it harder for the Venezuelan people to belifted out of poverty (and) will make it harder for the people to realise theirfull potential.

 "I'm concerned about the Venezuelan people," Bushsaid in an interview with Fox News Channel.

"And I'm worried about the diminution of democraticinstitutions," he said.